


Milk with two sugars, thanks.

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Monsters Trying to Pass as Human, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 00:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13752120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: At his desk, Jon closes his eyes. He waves a vague hand in the man’s direction. “This is Michael-uh, Mike Crew,” he mumbles. “Ex Altiora, Lichtenberg scars, tosses people off skyscrapers.”“Oh," Martin says. Recognition strikes a moment later.Like lightning, he thinks, and immediately feels tactless. "Oh. I see.”“I wish you wouldn’t,” Mike Crew says pleasantly. “I really just want to be left alone. It’s what I’m trying to communicate here, but it seems to go in one ear and out the other.” Again, Martin feels that awful swooping in his stomach, as if the floor is lurching away under his feet.





	Milk with two sugars, thanks.

It’s a sullen, stormy day when Martin first meets the man with the lightning scars. This is not surprising. Some things are coincidence; other times, life just _knows_.

“Jon has a visitor,” Tim says in passing, in that same detached tone that has become his default. “Didn’t look very happy about it.” He is openly disinterested, already turning back to his filing. Martin hands him a folder; Tim stares at it as if he’s never seen it before.

“A new statement, maybe?” Martin suggests. “Did you get a name?”

“Nope,” Tim says. “That would require me to care.”

“Oh.”

“Yup. Do you mind? I sort of have filing to do. Wouldn’t want our boss to have to reach for the murder pipe again, would we?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t keep bringing that up.” Summarily dismissed as Tim turns his back, Martin heads for Jon’s office. It’s not that he’s…paranoid, exactly, except that he’s starting to think that paranoia should be the default mindset for anyone wanting to survive long at the Institute. Elias isn’t going to rescue anyone; the _murder pipe_ is apparently saved for people who might tell Jon too much. Worm infestations and parasite hive-women aren’t serious enough, and whatever killed Sasha clearly didn’t warrant intervention.

He can’t blame Tim for the detachment. It’s only a matter of time before something else has a go at cracking the Archives.

There are raised voices coming from Jon’s office; the door is not quite closed, and Martin tries not to feel guilty about pulling it open, tentatively, wary of trespass. He can hear the high note in Jon’s tone that speaks of worry, discomfort, and the forced hostility that speaks of…nothing out of the ordinary. Martin enters the office.

There is a man seated in the chair opposite Jon’s desk. He is speaking.

“-so you can see why I’m not very happy with you,” he says.

The tone is calm, if terse, but Jon flinches back as if he’s been screamed at. “Yes, well, sorry about that,” he snaps. “It wasn’t actually my fault I was being stalked by a police officer with a grudge and, apparently, a gun-”

“All that hassle,” the man says. “And all because you wanted to know how I got these scars.”

“Batman,” Martin says before he can help himself.

It’s a mistake, as it turns out; both Jon and his companion turn to look at him, and Martin finds himself feeling very unwell. Sudden-unset nausea, but not. Like an x-ray would feel, if it could be felt, but at the same time…swooping. A yawning pit in his stomach that stretches, flexes, and leaves his knees shaking.

“Sorry,” he mutters, swallowing hard. He fumbles for the door frame with one hand. Only barely keeps himself upright. “I didn’t mean to- I just- there was the quote, and…I like that movie. Sorry.”

“Martin,” Jon says. “Unless the archives are currently burning down around our ears, I don’t want to hear it. Leave.”

“I was just going to ask if I could get either of you some tea, or a coffee maybe-”

“Get _out_.”

“Tea would be lovely,” the guest says. “Thanks. It’s _Martin_ , is it?” He’s not a large man, and his voice is measured, even. He wears an unremarkable suit that fits him well, though looks slightly faded. There is nothing threatening about him. The scarring is unfortunate, of course, but scars are not inherently frightening. All the same, Martin can’t help but notice that Jon is gripping the edges of his desk with white-knuckled fingers, that he is paler even that usual, that his eyes are wide, terrified.

“Um,” Martin says. “Yes? Yes. That’s me, I’m one of the assistants. Are you, um, are you here to give a statement? I know it can be a bit daunting at first, lots of people say so. But they also say they feel better afterwards. So. There’s that. And of course if it’s a serious thing, we do a lot of background research and see what we can dig up on it, or anything that might help with the problem.”

The man smiles. He’s not bad-looking, though his age is a bit difficult to tell; Martin hazards a guess at somewhere between his own age and Elias’, though now he thinks about it, Elias is a bit hard to place too. Even from this distance, his eyes are incredibly blue. _Blue like the sky_ is far from the most original comparison ever made, but it seems oddly apt in this case. As if it’s the only comparison that makes sense. They are blue, yes, but they are also very distant. As if there is a part of him that exists outside and above this room.

“Oh, I don’t have a problem,” the man tells him. “And I’m definitely not here to give another statement.”

“Already gave one, did you? Right then, I’m sure it’s on file somewhere, I might actually have done the research myself, um- what was your name?”

At his desk, Jon closes his eyes. He waves a vague hand in the man’s direction. “This is Michael-uh, _Mike_ Crew,” he mumbles. “ _Ex Altiora,_ Lichtenberg scars, tosses people off skyscrapers.”

“Oh," Martin says. Recognition strikes a moment later.  _Like lightning_ , he thinks, and immediately feels tactless. " _Oh._ I see.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Mike Crew says pleasantly. “I really just want to be left alone. It’s what I’m trying to communicate here, but it seems to go in one ear and out the other.” Again, Martin feels that awful swooping in his stomach, as if the floor is lurching away under his feet. He clings to the door frame.

“Okay, well, that’s fair,” he says. “I once had a scary worm-woman camp outside my flat for thirteen days just in case I felt like opening the door and getting eaten? I didn’t, but it was pretty terrible. I had to block up all the cracks, and I didn’t really sleep, just in case she got in, but my point is that I know how it feels. Wanting to be left alone. So, um, how about I just bring you that tea and let you go about your day. D’you take milk? Sugar? Lemon?”

The swooping feeling fades somewhat as Mike turns to address Jon. “Does this one actually know what happens around here?”

“Sort of,” Jon says. “Far more than I’m happy about, at least.”

“That won’t protect him.”

“Excuse me,” Martin says, slightly desperate. “I don’t need to be protected, I do just fine. I didn’t get eaten by worms, or…lose my mind, like I think Tim might be doing? I wish you’d talk to him, by the way, because Elias did but I’m not sure it helped-”

“Two things,” Mike says, and Martin shuts up. He sways, abruptly light-headed; the blood pounds hard in his ears. He imagines that he can hear a distant rushing noise, like a storm wind outside his window. “First: get out if you still can. You don’t belong, and it shows _very_ clearly. Stick around too much longer and something nasty is going to take you apart and play with you. Be a shame to see that happen.”

“Right,” Martin says. “I mean, it’s too late, actually. I quite literally can’t leave. But thanks anyway, I appreciate the warning.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Mike says, and he sounds sincere. “You could do a lot better.”

“What was the second thing?”

“Milk with two sugars, thanks.”

 

* * *

Mike finds him in the break room, steeping tea and staring at the packet of chocolate biscuits he keeps for emergencies. It does seem like an emergency, somehow. Jon is slightly more upset than usual, Tim is filing obsessively, and if his very life depends on it, and Melanie is out doing research, which leaves Martin as the only somewhat normal person in the building. If he deems it an emergency, then an emergency it is. And anyway, the biscuits have been sitting on the shelf for two months now, and it’s about time he bought new ones.

Martin goes to check on the tea, and his stomach…drops. He clings to the bench for balance.

“Hello again,” he says. “Did you sort out your thing with Jon?” He turns to offer what he hopes is a friendly smile, though slightly hindered by the bench-clinging, and the unnerving sensation of some sudden, inner abyss yawning open behind his intestines.

Mike stands in the doorway, watching with those startling, too-blue eyes. “It doesn’t work for you, does it?” he asks. “The compelling business, where you ask a question and we spill our secrets on your altar?”

“Um. No, I think I would have noticed that. Seems more Jon’s sort of thing.”

“He had my statement from me. Didn’t even realise I was giving it until it was done, and then I actually thought I felt a bit better afterwards. Some sort of psychological reward system, I suspect, like a rush of endorphins after going for a run. Probably. I don’t have that sort of thing anymore, so I’m mostly working from memory here.”

“Have to take your word for it,” Martin admits. “I don’t do much jogging. Or any, actually, I…probably should, I might need to be able to run away very fast in the future. Sorry, sidetracked. You were talking about your statement.”

“Hmm,” Mike says. “And there’s…nothing. No mental prompt to start telling you things. That’s interesting. Risky, too; it makes you highly disposable. Archival cannon fodder.”

“Thanks.”

“Just telling it how it is. Look, since you asked nicely: I was struck by lightning at age eight, and then stalked for decades by a creature that pretended to be part of that, but wasn’t. I went looking for ways to get rid of it, which, yes, might have involved killing a few people. Found the right book, gave myself fully to the high and unending, and no regrets since. There. Happy? You should be. Your Archivist had to go through hell and back to get that, and here I am giving it to you for free.”

“Okay,” Martin says uncertainly. “Well, thank you. Um. Would you like to take a seat? Tea’s almost ready, and I have biscuits if you’d like them.” He’s comforted to find that Mike looks about as confused as he feels. It does nothing to mitigate the shaky sense of vertigo lingering in his stomach, but he’s relieved when the other man pulls out a chair at the cheap staff room table and sits down. Martin sets a plate of chocolate biscuits in front of him. They both stare at it for a moment.

“This is weird,” Mike says eventually.

“Not really, I mean, I always ask if visitors want tea. But also yes. A little bit?”

“I came here with half a mind to kill your Archivist.”

Martin fumbles with the mugs, almost dropping both before he recovers. “Please don’t,” he says fervently. “I know Jon gets a bit difficult to talk to sometimes, he can be a bit…stand-offish, but that’s not his fault. He’s having a hard time right now. He doesn’t mean it.”

“Definitely cannon fodder,” Mike says. “Look at you. In so far over your head that you don’t remember what the sky looks like. And your Archivist is too new to offer any sort of protection. Not that it matters. I’ve heard stories about what happened to his predecessor’s assistants. You might want to look into that.”

“I don’t think it would help,” Martin says. “It wouldn’t happen the same way a second time, would it?”

“Probably not.”

Martin makes tea. He adds two spoons of sugar and a splash of milk to each mug. It’s probably a personality flaw, but he’s always found himself inclined to like people who take their tea the same way he does. There’s a sense of camaraderie to be found in that simple shared preference. A suggestion that there might be more to share.

“There you go,” he says, placing the mug in front of Mike and pulling up a chair opposite.

“Thank you.” Two mugs of tea are duly stirred. Martin stares into his and finds himself lost for words. What does one say to a man that is not a man, and sits with a stillness that suggests he finds breathing optional? He thinks, given the history behind Mike’s scars, that it might be in poor taste to talk about the weather. This is a shame; it’s a wet, miserable day, which would have been prime fodder for shared commiserations with anyone else.

Martin thinks briefly of the biscuits on the table. They’re out in the open now, and he’s been resisting for two months, which is quite admirable given how those months have treated him. He wants one rather badly. But now he’s stuck in that awful biscuit-less paralysis that results from waiting for the other person to reach first. And Mike isn’t reaching. Does he even eat biscuits anymore? Stupid not to have asked.

“So,” Mike says. Martin looks up from his tea, but the sentence seems to have trailed off. Eye contact is made; it’s awkward, and broken almost immediately. He sees Mike glance at the biscuits.

“Would you like one?” Martin blurts, offering the plate. He’s almost giddy with relief when Mike actually takes a biscuit, although that might also be the constant, lingering sense of vertigo.

“Thank Christ for that,” Mike says. “I was waiting for you to go first, but you didn’t.”

“Oh,” Martin says. “Well, I was hoping _you_ would, actually.”

“I was trying to be-”

“Polite,” Martin finishes in a rush. “Yes, I know, me too. But it didn’t work and now I’m mostly just embarrassed, which is…normal. Um. Please don’t wait to take the next one, I might actually die.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Got you. Right, uh, tell you what. I gave you my story, so fair’s fair. Tell me about your worms.”

“Oh, you don’t really want to-”

“No, yeah, I really do.” He sounds like he means it.

Defeated, Martin tells the worm story. Some of it, at least; he knows Jon still has doubts about his professionalism, but he’s not about to tell a relative stranger all about how close the Archives came to falling. He sticks to his own personal nightmare. The cobwebbed basement, the honeycombed (worm-combed?) woman, the thirteen days inside his flat. He doesn’t mind it as much as he thought he would. Something to do with Mike’s stillness, a sort of looming patience, _like storm clouds in the sky,_ Martin thinks, and tries to memorise it for later.

“Anyway, she left in the end,” he says at last. “Got bored, maybe, or found something better to do. I had to move in to the Archives and stay there for a few months, until she showed up again, and we killed her. That’s…the story. Um. Yours is better, to be honest, all I did was hide.”

“You didn’t die, though,” Mike points out. “Better than some could say. The Hive’s a bit of a loose cannon from what I’ve heard, and not one of the most merciful things to come up against. That must have been hard for you.”

“Oh. Um, yes, it was. Thanks.”

Mike reaches for another biscuit. “Was that alright?” he asks. “The sympathy bit. I haven’t done it in ages, I’m out of practice.”

“No, it was good, actually. Sincere. I appreciated it.”

“Grand. Well, I’ll admit you’re a bit tougher than I’d expected. You tell a good story and you make a decent cup of tea. Suppose I’ll hold off on killing your boss, just this once.”

“Really?” Martin says. “I mean, that’s- excellent, that’s great news. And listen, I’m sure whatever he did, it wasn’t on purpose.”

“He got me shot,” Mike says pleasantly. “Through the head. Almost, anyway. Just lucky I was waking up when it happened, I was conscious enough to stop the bullet before it did anything.”

“You can do that?” Martin asks. “ _Wow_. I mean, god, sorry about getting shot, that’s not good at all. But about the bullet stopping thing-”

“Objects moving through the air at high speed. Sort of my specialty. I’m lucky neither your boss nor the woman that shot me actually bothered to check if I was dead. Helps that it was dark. Still, it didn’t stop them from burying me alive, which is the kind of thing that gets me _very_ serious about killing people.”

Martin decides that, given the circumstances, he’s probably justified in having a third biscuit. “I, um, don’t really know what to say to that,” he admits. “I’m…sorry? Sorry, that’s a bit inadequate. Uh. Wow. Yeah, I can see why you might be a bit angry about that, I wouldn’t like it either.”

“It’s insulting,” Mike says. “Worse, even. Breaking taboo. I mean, he _knew_ who I belonged to, and he decided to _bury me_? Pack me in under the earth, choke out the sky, until the worms ate my skin and the ground crushed my bones into powder? _Me_?”

The swooping sensation is back with a vengeance. Martin clings to the table, to his mug, to the concepts of _ground floor_ and _at sea level_ and _not actually somewhere up a skyscraper_. His body isn’t sure it agrees, however, and he thinks he can feel the floor underneath him start to take on extra storeys, extra height, until he wonders what he’d see if he looked out the window. He doesn’t dare. He stares at his tea. His own worried face is reflected back at him; he almost thinks he can see clouds behind his head. There is a sense of…anticipation. Like sitting at the apex of a roller coaster, waiting for the drop.

The room is getting cold.

“Excuse me,” Martin mumbles. “That’s, um, quite uncomfortable, actually. If you could maybe stop. It’s just, I think I might be about to faint.”

He blinks as his stomach settles out with a lurch, his feet suddenly finding themselves back on solid ground. He’s shivering. But the room is warm, so that’ll pass, and no harm done. “Thanks,” he says. “Uh. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d prefer if that didn’t…happen again? Too much?”

“Sorry,” Mike says. He does sound genuine about it, and his face is doing a good approximation of regret, so Martin chooses to believe him. “Bit rude of me, taking it out on you. Not your fault. Uh. Yeah, like I said, sorry. Pretty embarrassing, I didn’t actually realise I was doing it. You alright?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s fine, I’m sure the shaking will go away.”

“Have the last biscuit, you look like you need it.”

“Oh. Yes, um. Thank you. So, is that why Jon’s scared of you?”

Mike shrugs. “Probably. He was rude, so I…pushed him around a little bit. Nothing permanent, I got the impression he didn’t really know what he was doing, so. Not fair to kill him for learning. I’d just prefer he went and did his learning somewhere that isn’t my house, you know? ‘Course you do. You know exactly what it’s like to have another power try and intrude on your home ground.”

“Fair enough,” Martin says. He eats his biscuit.

The dregs of his tea sit cold in the mug; they’ve been there a while. And random bouts of vertigo aside, it’s been rather nice. He doesn’t often get to have long chats with anyone who doesn’t belong to the Institute, which doesn’t say very good things about his social life. And that’s fine; Tim and Sasha were always the ones with friends and partners all over the place, and Melanie’s taken over from where Sasha left off. Martin himself has always been more like Jon. The phrase _lone wolf_ springs to mind, but he’s not quite delusional enough to think that he could pull that one off. He really doesn’t have the looks for it. He’d need to be slimmer, more intimidating, less freckly, less inclined to stammer.

Mike could pull it off, he thinks with a touch of envy, and a touch of something that isn’t envy. With his distant blue eyes and careful good manners, and the sense that he doesn’t quite belong on the same level of existence. Like he should be higher up.

“Suppose I should be going then,” Mike says, and Martin hides mild disappointment.

“Suppose so,” he agrees. “I should probably…get back to work.”

“Sorry, did I steal your lunch break?”

“Sort of. I mean, it _was_ my lunch break, but you didn’t steal it, I…it was nice. I would have just been in here anyway, so. Nice to talk to you.” Chairs are pushed back, and Martin collects mugs and crumb-strewn plate, loading them into the dishwasher. He half expects Mike to disappear while his back is turned. It’s a pleasant surprise to find himself proven wrong.

“Want to walk me back to the entrance?” Mike asks. “Not sure you want me just wandering around here. I might get lost.” He has a nice smile that is only made slightly unnerving by those overly blue eyes. Martin doesn’t point out that they’re really close to the entrance, and there is in fact a sign right outside the room, which he couldn’t possibly have missed. Obviously he’s asking for a reason. It might have been a threat; a reminder that he belongs to something large and frightening, and shouldn’t be allowed to explore the Archives on his own.

There is of course the possibility that he finds Martin interesting and wants to keep talking a bit longer. The smile supports this, Martin thinks. Unfortunately, he’s never been so lucky in his life, and he doubts that’s about to change. _No_ , he thinks, _on the whole, probably a threat_. He leads the way back to the entrance.

There, Mike stops, and offers a hand to shake. “Pleasure meeting you, Martin,” he says. “Honestly. Stop by sometime, I can repay the tea. Your Archivist knows where I live.”

Martin stares at the proffered hand. He’s half way to instinctively accepting it before he remembers Jon’s burns (they’re bad, they are _so_ bad, and Martin’s seen some terrible things in his time at the Archives but he can’t bear to look at Jon’s poor hand) and hesitates.

Mike raises his eyebrows. “No?” he asks mildly.

“No, I-I will,” Martin says. “I mean, I’d like to, honestly. But Jon’s burn…Um. I just. If I shake your hand, will I be okay? Not…hurt?”

“Your Archivist got that burn because he offended someone with a lot more power than him.”

“Yes,” Martin says, “but he didn’t mean to, is what I’m saying. Sort of like how I didn’t mean to offend _you_ , and I don’t think I said anything particularly offensive, but. It’s hard to tell, and you might be…fuming? Um. It’s just, I really need this hand.”

“Do you?” Mike says. “What for?”

Martin braces himself. “I write poetry.”

There is no discernible expression on Mike’s face. “Right,” he says blankly. “Poetry. Sure. Er…Good for you, it’s nice to have hobbies.”

“Yeah.”

“Any good?”

“No,” Martin admits. “Not really. But I like it anyway, you know? I don’t have to be the next Keats or Wordsworth, I just- It makes me feel better. And you never know, I might actually improve someday, so. I need the hand.”

“Unexpected, but reasonable,” Mike says. It’s a bit hard to tell with the eyes and all, but Martin has a sneaking suspicion he might be trying not to laugh. “It’s alright. I’m not with Jude and the fire starters, I don’t burn people. Your hand is safe with me.”

“Okay,” Martin says. “You know what? Okay. I trust you.”

“ _That_ sort of attitude is going to get you killed.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He takes Mike’s hand.

Nothing happens.

It’s a bit of an anticlimax, after everything. Cool skin, firm grip, standard handshake. And Mike is definitely laughing at him now, but Martin can’t bring himself to mind too much. He’s far too busy being weak with relief.

“Oh look,” he says. “You actually meant it. Wow, um. Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the next Wordsworth,” Mike tells him. “Couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

“Really?”

“Nah. Wouldn’t care, to be honest. Not much of a poetry bloke, it’s all just words to me.”

“Okay,” Martin says. “That’s…fine, that’s absolutely fine-”

“I’ve pissed you off, haven’t I? Didn’t think that was possible, you didn’t seem the type.”

“No, I’m not- it’s fine, you’re allowed your opinion-”

“Look,” Mike says. He’s unbearably relaxed in the face of Martin’s red-faced spluttering. “How about this. I admit I might be wrong, and I’m open to changing my mind. Nothing personal against poetry. I’ve just never been much for lots of words.”

It’s not quite an apology, but Martin suspects it’s the closest he’ll get. He stomps down on the righteous indignation that rises so easily in situations like this one (and part of it is defensiveness; he keeps his poems so secret, because he knows how people react, and he only really writes for himself anyway). It’s not Mike’s fault he’s sort of rubbish at it, anyway.

It’s at this point he realises that they never actually broke the handshake.

“Um,” he says.

Mike sighs. “It’s the biscuits all over again,” he says ruefully. “There’s a reason I don’t get out much. Never really did.”

“I’m no better,” Martin says, and takes his hand back. He finds himself sneaking a glance at the scar branching up Mike’s neck, a lightning bolt under his skin. Wonders if it’s just his imagination that his hand is tingling. If there was the slightest sense of shock when they parted.

“Right,” Mike says. “So, er, I’ll be going then-”

“Do you want to get coffee sometime?” Martin blurts. He’s mildly stunned to hear himself actually asking, as opposed to missing the moment and spending days afterwards fantasising about all the things he could have sad and didn’t. This isn’t like him at all. And yet, he can’t seem to stop. “I mean, you don’t have to, feel free to say no, um, preferably without-yeah. I just- I’d like to talk to you some more. If you’d like. Somewhere other than here. It doesn’t even need to be coffee, we could get tea, or…something? Together. As a, um. A date. Oh god, I did that badly.”

“A little bit,” Mike agrees. “And I’m not normally one to judge. But that was…mesmerizingly bad. Don’t suppose there’s something around here that recorded it?”

“I don’t know,” Martin says miserably. “Probably. Why?”

“I want a copy,” Mike says. “Because yeah, actually, coffee with you sounds good. I don’t tend to like people right off the bat. And when I do, it usually means that I’m going to keep them around for quite a while. Be nice to have a copy of that, so I can play it back to you sometime after we lose track of what number date we’re on. Might be funny.”

Martin is briefly floored. It takes him several seconds to work out what’s actually been said, and several more to come up with a response. “Oh,” he says. “You actually- I mean, yes! I’ll see if there’s any recording. Bet there is. Cameras all over the place around here, which makes sense when you consider- um. Yes. Did you…have anywhere in mind? That we could go?”

Mike gives him a considering look. And although Martin braces himself instinctively for the floor to start feeling like it’s slipping out from under his feet, it doesn’t happen. He feels unsettled, yes, and slightly dizzy. But he also just asked someone out on a date for the first time in…ages, so for all he knows it’s him, and nothing to do with Mike at all.

“I might know somewhere,” Mike says slowly. “Depends. How are you with heights?”

 

* * *

 

Jon finds Martin still standing by the door a few minutes later. There is something slightly more dishevelled than usual about his appearance, and a certain breathlessness that suggests he might have sprinted from his office.

“Is he gone?” Jon demands.

Martin glances towards the door, disappointment forming in his stomach like mildly curdled milk. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he just left, he had other stuff to do. He might come back sometime? I think? He seemed nice.”

“Seemed…” it is rare to find Jon so lost for words. “Seemed nice,” he repeats. “Yes. They’re very good at _seeming_. And he didn’t, uh, hurt you?”

“Nope,” Martin says. “I just showed him to the exit. He was…nice. That’s all.” He tucks his arm discreetly by his side, knowing as he does that Jon isn’t going to notice, and Elias already watched it happen-

(“ _Hell_ ,” Martin says, pen in hand. “I don’t actually have any paper on me, um, if you could just wait ten, maybe twenty seconds-”

“Here,” Mike says, taking the pen and Martin’s left wrist. In a careful hand, he writes his number on the back of Martin’s skin and under it writes, _Mike_. “Though you might want to copy that down before it smears. Or text me right away or something.”

“I will,” Martin swears. “ _Right_ away. Or…actually, I’ll probably leave it about ten minutes? Because right away feels a bit, um. Tim would probably tell me it comes across as desperate. Which I’m not-” except that he is. He so is. “But not longer than ten minutes because I’m not sure I can wait that long. Anyway. I’ll text you.”

“Looking forward to it,” Mike says, and leaves. Martin starts counting seconds.)

“He was very nice,” Martin says firmly, and Jon seems to wilt.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine, I don’t care, as long as he didn’t break anything. Or anyone. Look, I’m-I think I’m going to have a bit of a lie down, so if you need me…”

“I think I can manage,” Martin says. “Go get some rest, you look like you need it. I’ll stop by in half an hour to see if you need tea, how about that?”

“Fine.” Jon stumbles out. Literally; he has to lean on the wall for support, as if his perception of solid ground is a little shaky at the moment, as if he can’t quite believe the ground is actually steady under his feet. As if he has to reassure himself that there is any ground there at all.

 _He was nice_ , Martin says to himself. _Perfectly lovely, mostly._

He waits the requisite ten minutes. Then he texts Mike:

 _I’m free after two-thirty on Friday afternoon if you still want to hang out_.

Mike waits a very polite five minutes before replying with a time, a place, and an unambiguous, _It’s a date._

Martin isn’t falling yet. But he has a feeling that, given time (and not much time, at that), he will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Mike Crew is alive, I don't make the fucking rules. Also, I have never written a more painfully awkward ship. I'm going to do it again. I can feel it. _URGH_.


End file.
